Add-On Releases - [AJAX] Helpful Answers - Post Rating System (plus many sub-features)

Note: While this modification is updated for compatibility, I am only developing features for the 4.x version. I understand many sites continue to use 3.8 for a variety of reasons but dual developing takes time away from adding anything new. I encourage you to develop out your own change and share them back as no modification is ideal for every forum out of the box.

Every day your users contribute hundreds if not thousands of posts making it hard for new members and guests to separate out the best answers from those that are less helpful. The Helpful Answers System offers your members a quick way (AJAX) to rate individual posts as either helpful or not allowing future visitors to understand the benefits of each post.

Designed for maximum flexibility:


This addon is built to be flexible and offers several customization options including:

• The ability to show a user's vote stats in posts
• The ability to use image or text ratings.
• The ability to offer yes/no or scaled 1-10 point ranking.
• The ability to turn off negative ratings for a positive only system.
• The ability to decide which forums are open for helpful answer ratings.
• The ability to audit the system and identify top users and potential abusers.
• The ability to ban specific members from using the system.
• The ability to customize the AJAX message shown after a post is rated.
• The ability to edit all text and messages through phrases.
• The ability to show a page with the top helpful posts.
• The ability to show rating stats on a user's profile.
• Integration with the reputation system for ratings.
• Template driven display that can easily be customized to your forum.

For advanced users template conditionals and variables let you further extend the functionality to color highlight good or bad posts, include ratings in user?s profiles and much more.

Load & Scale:
This addon is designed to work with small to large sites and is currently being used by sites with more than 2 million posts. If you have questions about integrating with your big board please contact me.

Modification Installation:
This addon requires uploading multiple files, installing a vBulletin product and enabling the feature in any forums you wish. No template modifications are required. Please see the included install file for detailed instructions.

If you are not seeing the rating bar double check that you have enabled the feature in the forum you are in and insure the Manual Template override option is not enabled.

Rating Review & Deletion:
To identify and remove abuse a reporting system is included with this addon and can be found in your vBulletin ACP under the Helpful Answers tab. Through this panel you will be able to view a user's overall rating history and individual ratings and can remove either if necessary. Users can also be explicitly banned from the system.

Reputation System Integration:
Helpful Answers can be extended to directly tie into your reputation system giving users positive or negative points based on the ratings of their posts. There are numerous options on how to handle ratings that can be found in a separate Helpful Answers Reputation part of your vBulletin Settings page.

External Integration:
vB Plaza Modification - http://www.vbplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6359
vB Experience - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=199556

Anonymous Stats Tracking (optional):
vBulletin forums reach millions of consumers around the world yet little is known about their habits and opinions. This addon was released to the public out of requests but also to further the research of forum user's behaviors and actions through collecting the most basic data on thousands of sites.

By default this addon will pass basic rating data (positive or negative) to a 3rd party site for statistical purposes. Only the most basic data is captured (the vote and your site name) and no user information or specific forum details are logged, not even an IP address.

While you may disable this feature through the administrative options I ask that you consider leaving it in place to help this research effort and insure the continued support of the addon.

The tracking feature uses the php library cURL on a 5 second timeout. If cURL is not installed this option is automatically disabled.

Updates:
- 5/13/2011 - Release of 2.0.6 minor bug fix
- 08/31/2009 - Release of 2.0.0
- 08/07/2009 - Release of 1.9.5 stable

Other Versions:
This addon will work with 3.7 but to avoid issues with different code versions please see the 3.7 version thread here.

Before you download this modification please remember this is a free tool provided as a courtesy to you and support responses are subject to the availability of the author and other members. If you are looking for a professionally supported system this is not the solution for you.

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by gabrielt

Thanks, it worked. It is simply silly that the author of this mod didn't use this file.

Thanks

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by jl255

Any possibility of this?

Certainly something that could be looked at for a future version.

[NeutralizeR]

Hello,

Thanks for the great addon. I have the same "duplicate post" (same post it - but displayed a few times) problem. There are some duplicate helpfulpost entries in the mysql table and i delete them manually to fix the problem. Is there a permanent solution for it?

[NeutralizeR]

Here's the query to find the duplicate helpfulpost votes:

SELECT postid, 
 COUNT(postid) AS NumOccurrences
FROM helpfulpost
GROUP BY postid
HAVING ( COUNT(postid) > 1 )

Since i deleted all of them, it doesn't return any results but i know it'll happen again

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by NeutralizeR

Here's the query to find the duplicate helpfulpost votes:

SELECT postid, 
 COUNT(postid) AS NumOccurrences
FROM helpfulpost
GROUP BY postid
HAVING ( COUNT(postid) > 1 )

Since i deleted all of them, it doesn't return any results but i know it'll happen again

Thanks! The system checks for dup votes... twice in face but I'll review again to see why some are making it through.

[regua]

I have no idea how no one noticed this before, but there are mismatched parentheses in the file helpfulanswers.php, which result in the parse error that so many people have been talking about. Using an older version of helpfulanswers.php does seem to solve the problem, but also - as far as I've noticed - prevents the point counter from working (i.e. you can't display a user's total amount of points in the postbit).

Thanks for all the work, Ted, and I'm looking forward to a fix to this!

EDIT: I found the missing } at line 292. However, the points are being counted only when the notifications are turned on.

[The Realist]

Ummm installed ok but there is a missing } on the helpfull.php file, anyway.

Why does my forum say 0 out of 4294967295 members found this post helpful. Did you find this post helpful?

I dont have 4294967295 members wish I did.

Whats causing this and how can I correct it?

Regards

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by regua

I have no idea how no one noticed this before, but there are mismatched parentheses in the file helpfulanswers.php, which result in the parse error that so many people have been talking about. Using an older version of helpfulanswers.php does seem to solve the problem, but also - as far as I've noticed - prevents the point counter from working (i.e. you can't display a user's total amount of points in the postbit).

Thanks for all the work, Ted, and I'm looking forward to a fix to this!

EDIT: I found the missing } at line 292. However, the points are being counted only when the notifications are turned on.

Very strange but really appreciate the report and you tracking this down! Update issued...

[Ted S]

Originally Posted by The Realist

Ummm installed ok but there is a missing } on the helpfull.php file, anyway.

Why does my forum say 0 out of 4294967295 members found this post helpful. Did you find this post helpful?

I dont have 4294967295 members wish I did.

Whats causing this and how can I correct it?

Regards

4294967295 is the max value for a 32-bit integer in mySQL. Sounds like your database didn't update properly... Uninstall and reinstall the mod.

[Ted S]

Released a minor update which fixes a parse error in helpfulanswers.php - no other files need to be updated.